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posted by takyon on Friday November 01 2019, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-funded-studies dept.

Should we believe headlines claiming nearly half of all jobs will be lost to robots and artificial intelligence? We think not, and in a newly released study we explain why.

Headlines trumpeting massive job losses have been in abundance for five or so years. Even The Conversation has had its had its share.

Most come from a common source. It is a single study, conducted in 2013 by Oxford University's Carl Benedict Frey and Michael Osborne. This study lies behind the claim that 47% of jobs in the United States were at "high risk" of automation over the next ten or so years. Google Scholar says it has been cited more than 4,300 times, a figure that doesn't count newspaper headlines.

The major predictions of job losses due to automation in Australia are based directly on its findings. Commentaries about the future of work in Australia have also drawn extensively on the study.

In Australia and elsewhere the study's predictions have led to calls for a Universal Basic Income and for a "work guarantee" that would allocate the smaller number of jobs fairly.

Our new research paper concludes the former study's predictions are not well-founded.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday November 01 2019, @09:43PM (25 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 01 2019, @09:43PM (#914821) Journal

    Or folks could stop making car upholstery and learn Computer Science, Mathematics, Music, Filmmaking, or other non-automatable skills instead. Switching from buggy whips to car upholstery does not fix anything.

    Maybe a huge part of the workforce at a certain age, cannot easily retrain for more advanced skills.

    Maybe most non-advanced skills are the jobs that get automated.

    Maybe the jobs that don't get automated are not jobs that all of the population can do. There might be a real problem here.

    And maybe as TFA suggests, this concern is moot. But I'm not holding my breath. I'm not worried that MY job will be automated soon. But if many jobs will be, this is something I should be concerned about, because it will effect me, even if I still have a job.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:09AM (24 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:09AM (#914929) Homepage Journal

    You know, we've been having this exact argument since the birth of the US and there have always been new jobs created whenever old ones were made obsolete. Not just enough to keep up, enough to double the labor pool by expecting women to work as well. Exactly how many times do you need to see it happen before you quit saying it's a fluke?

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday November 02 2019, @05:23AM (1 child)

      by deimtee (3272) on Saturday November 02 2019, @05:23AM (#914959) Journal

      That's one way to look at it.
      Doubling the labour pool allowed employers to halve the wages. It now takes a double (average) income family to buy a house. Law of supply and demand. Adding robots could do far more towards increasing the supply of labour. If you add three human labour equivalent robots for each human, you could expect the wages to decline to a quarter of what they are now.

      That is obviously unsustainable, most people could not live on a quarter of their income. How that gets dealt with has several options:
      - UBI and encourage people to become artists and performers, to do things that benefit society but where it is difficult to see a monetary return
      - Luddite style pogroms against robots, where the villagers come wielding hammers and axes.
      - Government laws that attempt to share out the remaining jobs fairly.
      - massive general taxation and spending to create jobs.
      - sufficient taxation directly against human-replacing robots to make hiring a human economically competitive.

      All of these have problems, but I favour the first as it is the only one that lifts people up rather than holds robots down.

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 03 2019, @03:52AM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday November 03 2019, @03:52AM (#915204) Homepage Journal

        Or you could do absolutely nothing and humans will find something valuable to do with their time and people will pay them to do it. It only ever fails to happen in the most immediate term.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:44AM (7 children)

      by dry (223) on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:44AM (#915008) Journal

      That's not true. Look at about a hundred plus years back when a big wave of automation happened, you had various ways that the labour force was reduced due to not enough jobs. The hours worked were cut back, instead of working 6 and a half long days (12 hours), people went to an 8 hour day. Children were taken out of the workforce, and then sent to school to keep them out of mischief. Suddenly all the 5-15 year olds were out of the labour force. For the first time since agriculture, lower middle class women were also taken out of the workforce, the idea of a stay at home Mom became common, stay at home Mom's who weren't taking in laundry or whatever to help support the family.
      One difference is the fear of communism etc saw the benefits of automation being shared so a family only needed one bread winner instead of even the 4 year old having to work to help pay the rent.
      Eventually the good times ended, then there was a world war which created a lot of broken windows to be fixed and employment rose.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 03 2019, @03:54AM (6 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday November 03 2019, @03:54AM (#915205) Homepage Journal

        Erm... that is not why those labor practices changed.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday November 03 2019, @04:20AM (5 children)

          by dry (223) on Sunday November 03 2019, @04:20AM (#915211) Journal

          It is why the ownership class allowed the labour practices to change. Child labour laws, for example, were heavily fought against until the owners realized they no longer needed child labourers due to automation.
          The most of history of the industrial revolution has seen the percentage of labourers dropping from close to 100% at the beginning to today where between retirees, students, the disabled and those just choosing not to work results in a labour force much lower then 100% and continuing to drop. Hard to find good numbers but it seems to be about 2/3rds of 15-64 year olds with those underage and overage people not even counted anymore. Pressure is still being applied on the youth end by jobs requiring more and more education, laws designed to remove liberty and lock up millions of people, enforced retirement and much ease in getting considered disabled. No longer does a population of 350 million translate into well over 300 million labourers as lack of automation would require.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 03 2019, @11:22AM (4 children)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday November 03 2019, @11:22AM (#915286) Homepage Journal

            The ownership class allowed those changes to happen because they had a choice between that and torches and pitchforks, automation had nothing to do with it except after the fact.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday November 03 2019, @07:00PM (3 children)

              by dry (223) on Sunday November 03 2019, @07:00PM (#915401) Journal

              Been lots of times when the choice was between pitchforks and torches or giving into the people resulted in slaughter of those holding the pitchforks and torches. Just reading about the German peasant uprising, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants'_War [wikipedia.org], 100,000 out of 300,000 peasants slaughtered. There's enough cases in 19th century N. America as well to show that the owners don't easily back down unless their bean counters make a case for it, which they did with automation reducing the need for labour.
              Another slightly different example was one of the biggest strikes in Canadian history, asbestos workers struck for a few simple things, showers, a car wash and 2 sets of lockers so they didn't have to mix their street clothes with their work clothes as it seems the asbestos workers didn't want to bring any of their work home and kill their families. The strike lasted a few years IIRC as the owners weren't going to back down or give in.

              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 03 2019, @08:26PM (2 children)

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday November 03 2019, @08:26PM (#915433) Homepage Journal

                They can not back down all they like, it still isn't going to do shit when it's a federal law.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday November 04 2019, @03:47AM (1 child)

                  by deimtee (3272) on Monday November 04 2019, @03:47AM (#915573) Journal

                  That's strangely naive for you, Mr Buzzard. Who do you think writes federal laws ?

                  --
                  If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @02:31PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @02:31PM (#915034)

      there have always been new jobs created whenever old ones were made obsolete.

      Were there enough new jobs for the horses when the automobiles came?

      If you don't get it then maybe when the first thinking machines come, you won't be able to compete either...

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday November 04 2019, @03:01PM (11 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 04 2019, @03:01PM (#915723) Journal

      You know, we've been having this exact argument since the birth of the US and there have always been new jobs created whenever old ones were made obsolete.

      Just because something has been in the past doesn't mean it will always be in the future.

      We've always had easy to find cheap oil.

      We've always had plenty of breathable air.

      We've always had an INFINITE amount of drinkable clean water.

      We've always had a high standard of living for the middle class.

      We've always had elections secure from foreign meddling.

      I could contrive examples, but my point simply is that just because things have always worked out in the past doesn't mean it will always be so.

      The new jobs you speak of may indeed be created, but the number of people who can do them may be a minority of the population. THAT is the big problem. I think I've pointed it out three times. Not all "jobs" are the same. Not all people are interchangeable with all jobs. If the only jobs left require either high skill and/or talent, and/or high training, then there may be huge numbers of jobless people. THAT is the concern. How do you address THAT without just throwing out again that "we've always had plenty of jobs". Are people just going to suddenly get a lot smarter, more talented or more adaptable to retraining for high skilled jobs at age 40?

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 04 2019, @07:52PM (10 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday November 04 2019, @07:52PM (#915869) Homepage Journal

        None of your relevant examples are actually true as they deal with finite resources. Jobs are not finite resources. Jobs will exist as long as human beings are willing to part with the fruits of their own efforts in exchange for the efforts of others. Since there is no end to humanity pissing and moaning about how life could be better, there can be no end of job creation.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 04 2019, @08:25PM (9 children)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 04 2019, @08:25PM (#915901) Journal

          Pissing and moaning about life does not mean one has the resources to hire someone to make their life better.

          Unless by "people" you mean "corporations".

          Jobs are NOT finite resources -- they are the limited resources that others have, as you point out.

          The people pissing and moaning may not have jobs themselves, and thus no "fruits of their own efforts", because very few people have the skills to fill the jobs.

          As for people hiring services, yes, but done by robots. Robots would have the jobs. But what jobs are left for people? Jobs that haven't been automated away? What new jobs would be created that people ACTUALLY can retrain for, or have the necessary skills or talent for?

          I'm not trying to be alarmist. But looking at possible problems down the road is part of how you avoid them.
           

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 04 2019, @09:51PM (8 children)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday November 04 2019, @09:51PM (#915958) Homepage Journal

            Wow. Just wow. You really have not clue one about what money is, how jobs are created, or even what wealth is, do you?

            Jobs are limited only by the number of humans and how fast each can think of something they can do that another human would trade their own efforts for. They are effectively infinite.

            If you think you have to work for a corporation, you are an absolute moron. The amount of net job creation by companies with over 500 employees is dwarfed by companies with 499 or less; the gross isn't even the same order of magnitude. And 499 employees is easy to hit without becoming a major anything.

            Which is to say, you do not have to be a super rich motherfucker to create jobs. I know this first hand as I've created quite a few over the years and I flat refuse to become rich. You don't need much in the way of money to create jobs, you just need a thing that someone will pay you to do or create for them because it will make their life better or even just a little easier. And you need more demand than you feel like keeping up with yourself. That is in fact what all jobs boil down to. Thinking it has to be something that someone else thought up or that already exists is idiocy. If you want the absolute laziest route, find most anything people don't enjoy doing and offer to do it for them for pay.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 04 2019, @10:00PM (4 children)

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 04 2019, @10:00PM (#915967) Journal

              This sounds like maybe you are talking about bartering rather than working for cash or direct deposit.

              If society gets to that point, then the worst thing that I am concerned about has already happened.

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:57PM (3 children)

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:57PM (#916266) Homepage Journal

                Cash is nothing but a convenient abstraction of valuable human effort. The guy you want to fix your roof may not have need of some sysadmin work, so we trade the sysadmin work for tokens to someone who does and give the roofer the tokens instead. It's still barter, just hacked, more convenient barter.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 05 2019, @03:05PM (2 children)

                  by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 05 2019, @03:05PM (#916269) Journal

                  That is also how I see cash. I would have called it "stored work". Or stored "goods and services". But "goods" are basically the result of work. All money has always been tokens exchanged for someone's effort, even if that effort is in the form of a tangible object "goods" or direct "services".

                  When I need my roof fixed, under the scenario we're talking about, Robots might be doing that work. (someday) If not in the short term, then there would still be jobs for roofers. I noticed that the last time I replaced my roof, a lot of the workers enduring the heat of the day were -- Mexican. (just to mention that)

                  My thinking is that a lot of those jobs you are imagining are done by robots. That's the entire point of the discussion. What happens when a lot of people suddenly cannot get jobs because robots are better, cheaper, more politically convenient, and don't complain about low pay and getting groped by the boss.

                  There would still be jobs. Just not jobs that most people are able to do, nor are able to retrain to do. That is my entire concern here. And it is a concern for others -- as I don't (presently) expect it to happen directly to me.

                  --
                  People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
                  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:51PM (1 child)

                    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:51PM (#916339) Homepage Journal

                    My thinking is that a lot of those jobs you are imagining are done by robots.

                    And my point is that as long as humans can think of ways to make each other's lives easier in exchange for said tokens, jobs will never disappear. You're just unable to see over the horizon to find the current and future jobs that humans can do with hardly a thought but nothing electronic will ever be able to do worth a damn.

                    Automation has never lowered the total number of jobs except in the very shortest term. Humans always either find or invent something else to keep themselves usefully busy. Then they do it for other people and get paid. The only thing automation has ever done is increase everyone's objective wealth by making the expensive and difficult into the cheap and easy. And that's all it will continue to do.

                    See, this is part of why I keep saying those who steer the ships are genuinely, objectively, and massively more valuable to society than a grunt of any flavor will ever be. They can see the potential, most can't. They take the personal risk to make it happen, most won't. They logically, undeniably deserve far more than those who simply huddle in relative financial safety and do what they're told.

                    --
                    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:18PM

                      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:18PM (#916376) Journal

                      The only thing automation has ever done is increase everyone's objective wealth by making the expensive and difficult into the cheap and easy. And that's all it will continue to do.

                      That's the one bright light here.

                      Maybe there will be so much wealth that we stop measuring it.

                      By "wealth", as we said about "money", that means the goods and services it represents. Wealth isn't the money tokens you have or the numbers on a bank statement -- it's the things you can obtain with that money.

                      If there were so much wealth (like Star Trek, some episodes or movies) there would no longer be any reason to measure it, keep track of it, nor have "money". As Riker said "the point is to enrich yourself" -- I think that was from TNG episode "The Neutral Zone" if memory serves.

                      Another thing that would help besides robots would be nanotech developed to the level of what we've done with simple electrical and magnetic principles that were parlor tricks.

                      --
                      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:59PM (2 children)

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:59PM (#916267) Journal

              Just to point out, I am not trying to be disagreeable or disrespectful.

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:52PM (1 child)

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:52PM (#916341) Homepage Journal

                Fair enough, I'll tone it down. My apologies.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:13PM

                  by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:13PM (#916368) Journal

                  I didn't take any offense. I'm pointing out that I'm not trying to be a jerk.

                  --
                  People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.